Posted on 12/19/24
| News Source: Arutz-7
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday expressed optimism that a hostage release deal could be achieved between Israel and Hamas.
In an interview on Bloomberg, Blinken was asked whether anything has happened recently that gives him more grounds for hope that a deal is possible.
“There is, and the reality is we should logically be able to get this. And I say that with all the caution that comes with that statement because we’ve been very close before,” Blinken replied.
He later said, “But what’s changed is this: Hamas knows that the calvary’s not coming to the rescue. For months and months and months, it hoped it would get a wider war with Hezbollah, with Iran, with Iranian-aligned groups coming in and creating more problems for Israel on more fronts and helping Hamas endure. We now know that’s not happening, they know it’s not happening because of the very important work that was done with us and with others dealing with the unprecedented Iranian attacks on Israel, dealing with Hezbollah. So I think that’s concentrated minds among Hamas on the need to complete this deal.”
At the same time, Blinken cautioned that “it’s always incredibly fraught and it’s very hard to get decisions made, it’s hard to communicate. And for all of those reasons, even as close as it is, it can still move in the other direction, but we have – we’ve all been fanning out, working with all of the different partners who can make a difference and who may have some leverage with, communications with Hamas – whether it’s Qatar, whether it’s Egypt, whether it’s Turkey, where I was just last week.”
“The fundamental question right now is: Is Hamas finally prepared to say yes? And if it does, we get the hostages back, we get a ceasefire, we get an immediate dramatic improvement in the lives of Palestinian children, women, and men who have been caught in this horrible crossfire since October 7th of Hamas’ making. If they really purport to care about the Palestinian people, they will say yes and do it now,” he stated.
On the issue of possible normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Blinken once again stressed, as he has done several times, that one of the conditions for that is “a credible pathway toward a Palestinian state.”
The comments come amid reports that an agreement on a ceasefire and hostage release deal is closer than in the past.
Hamas sources on Thursday morning told Al-Akhbar newspaper that the negotiations are going "excellently," and expressed hope that in the near future "we will have an agreement."
However, they added that there are still two issues on which agreements have not yet been reached.
The first is Israel's demand to receive a list of living and dead hostages. According to the terror groups, there must be at least one week of no fighting in order for the terrorists to reach all of the hostages and evaluate their conditions.
Another issue is that according to sources in Hamas, there are not yet agreements regarding Israel's demand to include kidnapped soldiers who fit "humanitarian" criteria in the first stage of the deal, such that an injured soldier would be released in the first stage.
Hamas is claiming that they oppose this demand, stating that it is in contradiction to what has already been agreed upon regarding the ratio of convicted terrorists to be released in exchange for each hostage.